December 12, 2009

Not That It'll Matter Much

E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

And:

In the past three weeks since the e-mails were posted, longtime opponents of mainstream climate science have repeatedly quoted excerpts of about a dozen e-mails. Republican congressmen and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have called for either independent investigations, a delay in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases or outright boycotts of the Copenhagen international climate talks. They cited a "culture of corruption" that the e-mails appeared to show.

That is not what the AP found. There were signs of trying to present the data as convincingly as possible.

Again, nothing in this AP report will probably sway the climate skeptics. With a devotion to a empirically empty cause that borders on religious fanaticism, no amount of real world, reality-based evidence will change their belief that the Earth is not warming and even if it is man-made pollution is not contributing to it.

2 comments:

Nothing will change their thinking because their opposition has nothing whatsoever to do with thinking, only with helping business interests avoid paying for the pollution they generate.

Indeed, this is the perfect storm for the GOP, because it involves a complicated issue which uses scientific data to form its backbone -- and they know they can easily assail the data as being wrong, wonkish and liberal; which is to say,"intellectual" -- and that's right where their constituency lives.

The GOP is in the position of living a fantasy. But they simply don't care. Meanwhile, we bay at the moon and can't figure out why a bunch of NASCAR morons don't 'get it.' Will be ever learn to just tell our own set of lies?

No one on the "left" (a term which I hate and seldom use,) has the sack to call the Reicht's statements LIES and BULL----.

The pitching of anti-intellectualism and the supremacy of beliefs over facts is such an easy sell because not thinking is easier than thinking. Thinking means one might understand something, and thus have a moral obligation to do something about it.

And whenever DOING something about it involves helping someone else, it's somehow sold as "un-American."

Go figure.

The facts in this case are boring, but the fiction is juicy, and prints nicely at the tabloid scale...

We're doomed, is my guess. Looking around, I feel outnumbered by clueless people who just don't want to have to think about anything outside their own lives, and are being played by the big-money players. We're a gullible lot, especially when believing the lie is the easier path to take.